Tips

 

This list of tips provides a ‘checklist’ for thinking through the design of your own study. Their relevance will vary depending on the approach that you use and the materials your study will analyse.

 

Do you have a clear working definition of multimodality for your study?

 

Are you clear about the place of multimodality in your study? Are you ‘doing’ multimodality or ‘adopting’ multimodal concepts?

 

Have you chosen the most apt approach for your study? What is your rationale for that choice? Why is it more apt than the other approaches discussed in the book?

 

Are you clear as to what aspects of your research are ‘ineffable’ (that is, cannot be expressed in words)? You can use this to help strengthen your rationale for doing a multimodal study.

 

Have you stated clearly what a multimodal approach offers your study that a solely linguistic one does not? You can use this to help strengthen your rationale for taking a multimodal approach.

 

Have you explained how you connect the theoretical concepts that you use to the analysis of your research materials?

 

Have you considered what processes you will use to immerse yourself in your research materials (e.g. ‘breaking and taking it apart’ using commutation)?

 

Can you show how you ground your claims in the recorded interaction?

 

Have you considered how you will move from description to interpretation?

 

If you are combining multimodal concepts into a framework that combines them with other theories and methods have you been explicit about the benefits and challenges of doing so?

 

Have you explained how you will combine multimodal concepts into a research framework with other methods, and considered how your study makes a methodological contribution?

 

Whatever your route to multimodality, have you provided a clear solid grounding for the design of your study?

 

Have you established a clear and answerable overarching and subresearch question? Do these connect your study to multimodality and a body of previous research? Are they interesting, significant and feasible questions?

 

Have you considered how your data collection process might lose aspects of the artefacts you want to collect and how to manage that in your study?

 

Are you clear about the type and amount of contextual information that you need about any materials that you will collect for your study?

 

Do you have a clear sense of the kind of video recordings that you need to produce for your study? And how you need to position and use your video cameras to achieve that?

 

Have you selected a model of transcription for your study that aligns with your approach and the interactional features that you want to investigate?

 

Have you thought through the ethical concerns of your study design and how you can respond to your participants’ concerns in a way that will ameliorate these?

 

Have you designed a consent form (and project information leaflet) for participants that sets out different consent options for the use of video research materials?